The 4th Quarter Push

It's early May, and technically, by the criteria given us by the state, we COULD be done in about 10 days.  Shhhh, don't tell the kids!!  Because we're not done.  We'll school until early June-ish this year, I think, for a few good reasons.  

For starters, being nearly 2 years into this journey, our routine is built, and while free play days are more than awesome, they can sometimes be not-so-awesome, and I'd rather have most of our free play days land squarely in summertime.  For seconds, a lot of our curriculum changes/updates were made/acquired/discovered November to January-ish, so I'd like to push through and be at least close to wrapping them up.  And for last, we're kind of in the middle of stuff.  Cool stuff.  And we need a little more time to make sure to fully enjoy it.  

Kid-Specific Updates:

- Chase is barreling through Algebra, and it is un-fun when he needs help.  Un-fun for me, not him.  It's not difficult stuff, really.  It's just So. Incredibly. Boring.  To me.  Not to him.  His online writing courses have helped him work out a few kinks in his writing mechanics and with our daily writing prompts he is beginning to emerge with his own style.   He enjoys telling stories from a 1st person point of view; some of it sounds like the beginning of a Dragnet episode.  Chase recently performed at the local district Arts Festival with the jazz band.  He continues to love playing trombone, and participates in concert, jazz and community band.  He recently got a bit more added to his daily load, let's just leave it at that...   

He's also quite talented, and can take notes for history while holding a sleepy baby.  

- Indy struggled with her writing course at first, mostly with confidence issues.  Her improvement is coming slowly, with a lot of work on her end.  Her creativity and love of art shows in numerous ways, and through connections with our history lessons.  She's had a bit of a breakthrough in math, finally making connections with multiplication and division and how to pull the numbers you need out of and into word problems without getting everything mixed up.  Math is definitely not her favorite subject, but she's a trooper.  Indy still enjoys playing violin and practices nearly every day without needing to be prompted.  In fact, we've had to establish that music practice comes AFTER regular academics, and sometimes we still have to shut her down after an hour or so of play if she is supposed to work on something else (like chores, or cleaning her room....).  Her spring concert was fantastic, and we were very proud that she was one of just 10 kids who had memorized a harder song to stand and play at the end.  Attention-span wise, well, she is still out of her seat and very (very) easily distracted.  She and I might design a rewards chart together to work on this.  We've stayed connected with the school so that Indy could still participate in all the extras that 4th graders are privy to, like having a page in the yearbook, and the Ever-Epic 4th Grade Celebrity Shower at the Spring Fair.  

Multi-talented, like her big brother

She is also most likely to stay in her pajamas all day... 

Practice, practice

All that practice pays off!

- Riley has really come a long way in regards to sitting and focusing on her work this year.  Last year's Kinder year for her was much less structured, and not even planned, actually.  She had the desire to do so much that by the end of the year, it just so happened that she had completed everything a public school kinder would have done and a little more, so there was no reason to start her in K this year.  She has more than enough in her portfolio to call it a year this year, but since school is what we do M thru F around here, she's still doing it.  I'd love to get a lit program for her, but haven't yet found a good match to her ability.  For now, I've compiled a list of what they call "gentle" books - books that are for older kids but have content that is safe for younger kids.  We make sure to get these at the library twice a month, but she is also allowed to read through fun series, like the Magic Tree House books that she loves, even though they are written well beneath what she can handle.  We added a science program that she loves.  It's 1st grade level, so the written word is not enough for her, and the workbook we might as well just skip, but she loves the labs and projects, and we always have her pal Google for her to research more information on a topic.  

Spelling words from her list with Bananagrams

Helping Dad is definitely part of school, right? 

Home economics?

 - RJ goes to pre-K on Tuesdays and Thursdays, mostly still to give us a break and let him experience a classroom, just for this year.  It's good data to have, seeing how he does with others in authority and other people his size and age.  He gets these reports, and the teachers are always so amazed at how he knows so much but he's only there 6 hours a week... I find it so amusing that there is this mentality that he could only be learning during the hours he's at school...    He doesn't do much sit-down school here at home, but there are always boundless opportunities for learning.  For instance, when we walk back from school, he likes to see how "many it takes" - so, we end up counting to 65 as we walk.  He plays outside a lot, and rides his new balance bike like he's been doing it since birth.  Since he'll be 4 at the end of summer, I guess we'll have to see what he can handle for the upcoming school year.  I don't know that he'll be ready for a full Kinder year like Riley was at age 4, but he'll surely be ready for something.  With him, I see a lot of maps and mechanical stuff in our homeschool future...

 Here he shows me a map of the train yard on this app that is geared towards adults, it's difficult even for some of us older people in the house to drive the trains, and involves a level of patience that I don't possess, but he loves it. 

- Shelby is like her mama... wants to sleep in every morning!  Alright, at 4 weeks old, we'll give her a pass on doing school... .

And of course, some group activities:

History in the living room, baby and all

Modeling clay statues, like the Nubians

Making pita bread, like the Phoenicians

Don't forget the biggest sibling teaching the next sibling how to mow the yard, household chores are important, too!  At almost-13 and 10 and a half, we've got two totally capable lawn mowers, and one totally capable weed-whacker.  This is called a Parental Milestone, I believe.   

And what else do you do when it's been gloomy and raining for a week straight?  You gear up your kids and send 'em out to play, discover, build, and git muddy!